Benjamin Myers
Benjamin Myers is the author of the recently published collection of poems, The Family Book of Martyrs (Lamar University Press, 2022) as well as of three previous collections of poetry. His first book of non-fiction, A Poetics of Orthodoxy, was published by Cascade Books. Myers lives with his wife and three children in Chandler, OK. He served as the 2015-2016 Poet Laureate of the State of Oklahoma, and he is the director of the Great Books Honors Program at Oklahoma Baptist University, where he teaches courses on literature, writing, and Western civilization.
Articles by Benjamin Myers
Advent in Oklahoma
Like the people I grew up among, Puddleglum speaks hope sideways, hope being too sacred to speak outright. But he speaks it anyway, sideways and hedged but there, the way…
Ambiguity and Belonging in Oklahoma
It is hard to say who this land belongs to, but I know without a doubt that I belonged to it from my earliest youth. I was raised just south…
A Dictionary of Dumb Ideas: Tradition vs. Convention
We should aim to conserve what is deepest and true, not just what happens to have immediately preceded the present. It should be the conservative’s task to reconnect the manner…
Living In the Myth: A Review of Jason Stacy’s Spoon River America
Benjamin Myers reviews Spoon River America: Edgar Lee Masters and the Myth of the American Small Town by Jason Stacy. Stacey explores the changing and contested myth of the midwestern…
I’m Over the American Homer
I’m not canceling Whitman. But my own enthusiasm for his poetry is waning. The poet whose daring versification and daring lifestyle were once seen as the epitome of counter-culture has…